The Emergency DEI Summit (official title: “Emergency summit on the collapse of DEI in the entertainment industry”) started off with a temperature check on the place of women in the media industry pecking order. The good news is a lot of progress has been made. The bad news is that there is a lot of progress yet to be made.

The DEI Summit was spun up in response to the human rights collapse in the US and the speedy jettisoning of DEI initiatives by some big media companies in an attempt to appease the new US administration.

The current US government is more ostentatiously misogynist than any US government – possibly any Western government – in recent memory. In the case of the President, mistreatment of women has been part of his brand for decades. But his executive orders, supported by recent restrictions of women’s rights by the US Supreme Court, accompanied by the destruction by DOGE of government agencies providing support, have made disempowering women national policy.

“Executive Orders” are really just memos from the Oval Office to the Executive Branch of the US government. They don’t create new laws for the country, but—like a memo from the CEO—they can direct how employees of the executive branch conduct their work.

For example, in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 which prohibited government contractors from discrimination in hiring based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin. That Order was rescinded by the current President via another Executive Order in January 2025. Fortunately, many of those protections are still covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is federal law and can’t be changed without legislation from the US Congress.

The National Partnership for Women and Families laid out “20 ways the Trump administration has already harmed women and families” in March 2025. The impacts cited include particular repercussions in women’s health and in the workplace, including threatening the implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and firing decisionmakers at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Black and Asian women and part-time workers were the groups with the biggest union membership growth in 2024.

The National Women’s Law Center published a similar, more general, document, “Donald Trump’s first 100 days of Project 2025: Harms to women girls and LGBTQI+ people”. Well worth a read.

Powerful studios have been first to surrender

The entertainment industry had already been rolling back its DEI programs before the new US administration came in, but after the 2024 election, big media companies fell over themselves to show the incoming president that they were willing to turn a cold shoulder to people who were not white men, if it would make for a more harmonious relationship with the new government.

Our DEI Emergency Summit panel “A woman’s place is in the audience – and other lies” brought together three industry leaders who have spent years working on improving opportunities for women across media and entertainment. Amy DeLouise, founder of #GALSNGEAR, Sadie Groom, whose organization Rise gives women support for broadcast industry roles, and Kirsten Schaffer, CEO of WIF (Women In Film), gave their takes on how the roll back in the US industry could affect women.

What was apparent across all our Summit panels is that, despite the cruelty of the US government’s new assault, marginalized people—women included—understand all too well that this struggle is ongoing. While there is progress, setbacks are also inevitable. Organizations can’t let short term challenges divert them from their central mission.

“All three of us have been in the industry a long time,” said #GALSNGEAR’s Amy DeLouise, “What one particular country’s administration is trying to do—and I want to point out Donald Trump is not the entirety of the US government, he’s just one-third— doesn’t necessarily change our through-line.”

#GALSNGEAR works to support mid-career women in many areas that aren’t always covered in their jobs, including skills in negotiating, managing teams and financial literacy – the steady work of empowerment.

“We’re just plowing forward,” DeLouise said. “We have members in the United States who are feeling the stress, and probably our friends in Canada and Mexico are as well.”

Media industry orgs take responsibility

Rise, launched in the UK, but now with an international reach, has provided networks for women seeking entry to and career advancement in the broadcast industry, particularly in tech-related roles. Founder, Sadie Groom noted that economic factors have also chipped away at DEI initiatives.

Groom also runs the Bubble Agency, a PR company primarily serving broadcast tech vendors. Given the economic stresses in the industry, including the pandemic and strikes, she has seen marketing budgets among the first cuts companies make. But DEI outlay is now being jettisoned even before marketing. Support for organizations like Rise had already been shrinking.

But there is undoubtedly something very new happening now. The new government had only been in power two months when ¡AU!’s Emergency DEI Summit was held, but the shift in atmosphere was already dramatic.

“We’re definitely seeing a backslide in the industry,” WIF’s Kirsten Schaffer confirmed. “The pressure that companies felt in the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion isn’t there anymore. I’ve heard anecdotally from women in decision-making rooms that now people will say things like, “We don’t have to make sure our list is 50/50 anymore’ or ‘We don’t have to make sure that there’s a woman of color on the list’. Before, nobody would say that out loud. They might think it, but it’s not what they would do.”

Schaffer also pointed to economics as an additional lever used to squash DEI action.

“There’s a scarcity mentality because the business is changing so much…The companies are fearful that unless they stay on the right side of the President it will impact their bottom line. These things are making it a tough environment for women, for anyone who’s gender diverse, and anybody from other underrepresented identities.”

What gets measured gets done

DeLouise emphasized that “DEI” is essentially a common sense approach to business and society. She quoted a recent statement from former US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg: “’The opposite of diversity is uniformity. the opposite of equity is inequity, and the opposite inclusion is exclusion’. Nobody wants those things, not even White guys. I’m the mother of two White boys and I can tell you that all of their friends are massively diverse and they live in a world that is diverse. They believe in that innately.”

But from time immemorial lasting positive change has never happened based on good intentions and beliefs. The “benevolent CEO” is held up as a necessary ingredient for change, but those enlightened CEO’s who were pushing for DEI initiatives in 2024 are cutting them in 2025. Or if they aren’t, they’re in danger of being replaced by executives who will. Whether it’s providing opportunity or amending injustices, independent guidelines and frameworks are essential.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of ¡AU! Journal. Read the original here.